Right. A bit of a catch-up, on the ramp down after the glories of Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. Mass was offered on Monday for the repose of the soul of Tommy Gilligan (+), may he be eternally blessed. Yesterday's Mass was offered for the repose of the soul of Jerry Hanifin (+) and Mass was offered this afternoon for the repose of the soul of Bridie Mullin (+). Eternal rest grant unto them, o Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.
The first readings at Mass this week have been working their way through the second letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, with the gospel readings from the fifth chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel gently walking alongside. The letters to the Corinthians are masterpieces of apostolic ardour, addressing complicated social situations that caused the newly-born Christian community in Corinth much temptation. Ancient Corinth was known for her licentiousness, given the fertility cult that operated in the vicinity, employing hundreds of pagan priestesses, that is, ritual prostitutes. Aside from that, the Corinthians lived in a multi-tiered society and the new Christians still maintained such caste-like divisions, yet unable to understand the radical equality of the Christian religion. We know of at least two corrections administered to them by Saint Paul, because we have two apostolic letters in the Bible. There may have been more.
So on Monday, Saint Paul begins the letter with his usual salutation and praise of almighty God and His support of the Christian mission and the mediation of the Christian priests:
"He it is who comforts us in all our trials; and it is this encouragement we ourselves receive from God which enables us to comfort others, whenever they have trials of their own. The sufferings of Christ, it is true, overflow into our lives; but there is overflowing comfort, too, which Christ brings to us. Have we trials to endure? It all makes for your encouragement, for your salvation. Are we comforted? It is so that you may be comforted." - II Corinthians 1: 4-6
And then the gospel reading reads out the Beatitudes from Saint Matthew's Gospel, almost in a commentary of those brave early missionaries, suffering for the sake of Christ and the Gospel. Then, on Tuesday, the Apostle says to the Corinthians that Christ makes possible for us to merit the promises made by God, so that it is through Christ that we make our praise of God. He speaks of our belonging to God, who has anointed us and marked us as his own, completing the contract, so to speak, with the gift of the Holy Spirit:
"It is God who gives both us and you our certainty in Christ; it is he who has anointed us, just as it is he who has put his seal on us, and given us the foretaste of his Spirit in our hearts." - II Corinthians 1: 21-22
And the gospel reading tells us what it should mean to us to be Christians. Christ says that we are the salt of the earth, but we must beware losing our saltiness; we are the light of the world, but we shouldn't hide our radiance away - we must make a public show of our works of love. This is a rebuke of 'lukewarmness' in the observance of religion and a challenge to us to be true to the God who has taken ownership of us. Today's first reading leaps over to the third chapter of the second letter to the Corinthians, where Saint Paul declares that the new Covenant of Christ is written upon the hearts of Christians through the workings of the Holy Spirit, as opposed to the old Covenants, which were engraved or written down as a set of laws. Paul says that if even these written laws had great power, the new Covenant surely surpasses the old Covenants in its splendour, for they were temporary and it is eternal:
"We know how that sentence of death, engraved in writing upon stone, was promulgated to men in a dazzling cloud, so that the people of Israel could not look Moses in the face, for the brightness of it, although that brightness soon passed away. How much more dazzling, then, must be the brightness in which the spiritual law is promulgated to them! If there is a splendour in the proclamation of our guilt, there must be more splendour yet in the proclamation of our acquittal." - II Corinthians 3: 7-9
And in the gospel reading, Christ declares that He had come not to abolish the old Covenants, but to complete them, to fulfil them. What do you take away from all this? I would say that the old Covenants remain, but they are brought to fulfilment in Christ. The Old Testament is not merely a preface to the Gospels, as so many Christians seem to think. Rather, the ancient Covenants made by God with his chosen People form the heart of the Christian religion, in so far as the life and mission Christ may be both discerned as being in some way typified or prefigured in the dialogue between God and the People in the Old Testament; and then understood as the termination of that dialogue. Thereafter, all things are renewed. There is a new People of God, anointed by Him and signed by Him as His own.
And this anointing and signing cause the Law of God (not abrogated but completed), to be written by the working of the Holy Spirit onto the hearts of Christians. Obeying this Law is no longer a matter of legalism and ticking a series of boxes to say that one is an observant religionist; rather obeying the Law is a matter of love for God. The relationship between God and man of Master-slave has been radically transformed into one of Father-child, and we are challenged by the Apostolic voices of the New Testament to be true to that new relationship and not lose our flavour, to love God and to love those others that He loves, to love our neighbours.
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